Saturday, May 23, 2015

One of the ninety-nine Names of Allah is “Al-Quddus”. This particular attribute of Almighty Allah has the following meanings: the Holy One, the Pure One, and the Immaculate One. This Divine Name of Allah as “Al-Quddus” is manifested in ecology by the environment’s capacity to purify itself naturally. For instance, the bodies of animals that die upon the earth and the putrefying remains of vegetation are subjected to chemical transformation; and in time, they are naturally deposited into the depths of the earth thereby preserving the purity of the earth’s surface. Likewise, rains regularly drench the earth, the sun lights upon the earth, and the wind continually sweeps all impurities on the earth’s surface. In like manner, a true Muslim must endeavour to take lessons and benefit from Allah’s Divine Name of “Al-Quddus” by seeing to it that his life and his environment are both pure and clean. Muslims can only maintain the pristine purity of the environment if they make it their spiritual duty to actively protect the environment from all types of manmade ecological destruction.

Islam teaches that humans are stewards of Allah’s creation. Declares the Holy Qur’an: “He brought you forth from the earth and made you dwell in it” (Hud: 61). On the basis of the Islamic concept of Khilafah (stewardship), humans are tasked by Almighty Allah to be protectors of their environment. The Holy Qur’an further exhorts Muslims to protect the ecology and everything that comprise it by these profound words: “The seven heavens and the earth, and those in them declare His glory. And there is not a single thing but glorifies Him with His praise” (Bani Isra’il:44). Since the whole universe is the outward expression of Allah’s greatness, no Muslim should cause destruction to the environment nor engage in activities that destroy ecological balance and sustainability. Islam invites all human beings in general and Muslims in particular to be always on guard and mindful of ecology’s welfare, by seeking to protect the environment from all harms, destruction, and impurities.

Allah has generously allowed humans to benefit from the creatures and fruits of the earth for as long as they are lawful and clean (Halalan Wa Tayyiban). As humans benefit from Allah’s creatures, they have a spiritual duty to take care of their environment and an ethical obligation not to offset nature’s equilibrium and to ensure that future inhabitants of the earth will continue to have access to these bounties of Allah. In many passages of the Holy Qur’an, Allah warns us that wastage of natural resources is a grave sin, and destroying the balance of the earth through wanton and indiscriminate use by greedy exploiters deserves punishment in the Hereafter (See; Araf:31 and Bani Isra’il:26-27).

Almighty Allah, the Eternal Lawgiver of the cosmos has provided us with sound environmental principles as well as spiritual laws governing ecological spirituality so that we, His servants will be able to live our lives upon this earth as His trustees and vicegerents in caring for and protecting His creation. According to the Holy Qur’an, the earth, and in truth, the whole universe were created by Allah in the most beautiful and perfect manner, since Almighty Allah made the cosmos and everything in it, humans included, in perfect and beautiful balance (See, Tin:4). Humans were tasked by Allah the duty of protecting the environment’s wellbeing since it is the human beings who are the best of creatures and are gifted by Allah with rational discernment and freewill to carry-out His command in protecting the earth and the whole of nature. However, there are many times when humans show their ungratefulness and denial of the covenant which they made with their Lord that they started to behave despicably, as if they are “the lowest of the low” by beginning to pollute their environment and by greedily exploiting natural resources simply to satisfy their lust, selfishness, vanity and caprice (Tin:5). In the words of the Holy Qur’an: “Corruption has appeared in the land and the sea on account of that which men’s hands have wrought, that He [Allah] may make them taste a part of that which they have done, so that they may return [back to Him]” (Rum:41). No wonder, that in our present milieu, many calamities emanating from the environment befall humankind. These environmental catastrophes are reminders for us to repent from our irresponsible ways and unsustainable manner of treating our ecology, and to go back once again to Allah’s instructions and guidance in the manner of caring for our environment and natural resources.

Time and again, the Holy Qur’an reminded all the peoples of the world, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, to take seriously this divine mandate ofKhalifat-ul-Ardh (stewardship of the earth) by seeing to it that no wastage and exploitation of the earth’s resources are being done by fellow humans. All of us should be mindful that the satisfaction of our basic necessities must not be done in a wasteful or prodigal manner at the expense of the future generations following us (See Araf: 31). We, Muslims who are the direct inheritors of the commands of Allah as found in the Holy Qur’an, should all the more follow His directives in caring for and protecting our environment. We must fully adhere to the Qur’anic commands against wasting our natural resources and against exploiting and polluting our ecology. By following the examples of environmental protection undertaken by the Holy Prophet Muhammad and His Blessed Companions, we will be able to preserve our ecological resources for the years to come.

Prophet Muhammad was a great exemplar to all Muslims in respect to environmental management and ecological protection. The Holy Prophet participated in the city planning of Medina as an urban area with environmental sustainability in mind. He forbade the cutting down of trees, killing of wild animals and hunting birds not just in Medina, but also in the city of Mecca and the oasis surrounding Taif. The Prophet declared that the distance of 1,000 square meter circumferential radius around Mecca must be designated as conservation areas. Within these areas, he strongly prohibited the cutting down of trees, hunting and killing of insects and birds, and even breaking of palm branches (Sunan Ibn Majah, pp.113). He likewise forbade Muslims from wasting water while performing their ablution, even if they are living near streams or riverbanks. These prohibitions show that indeed, the Holy Prophet is very concerned with environmental protection and that he wanted all Muslims to do likewise (Sunan Abu Dawud, pp.43).

The Prophet saw that Medina was a verdant oasis where date palms grew in abundance and many cattle fed upon its fertile grasslands. In Medina, he commanded that for every palm tree that is cut, another must be planted in its stead. The people of Taif sent a delegation to establish alliance with Medina; and as one of the framers of the terms of agreement, the Holy Prophet added provisions declaring that the valleys of Taif must be environmentally conserved, so that destroying farms and hunting wild animals in the region were forbidden and that all tribal elders of Taif must strictly implement this provision. Also, upon his peaceful conquest of the city, the Prophet enjoined the Muslims of Mecca to plant trees and date palms along the grassland peripheries and near wells so that underground aquifers will not dry-up and grasses will not be scorched by the desert heat. Again, the Prophet prohibited the cutting of old giant trees which were used by wayfarers and beasts of burden for resting and shelter (Sunan Abu Dawud, pp.83-87).

The Prophet gave clear and strict orders regarding environmental sanitation. He was very concerned about the health of cattle, camels and horses as well as the cleanliness of their grazing sites. He also gave orders that mosques should be cleansed and perfumed regularly with aromatic herbs and wood resins, that the front yards and backyards of a Muslim’s house should be thoroughly cleaned, and that no one should urinate nor defecate near bodies of waters nor human waste be thrown near sources of running water (Tirmidhi, pp.64-66 and Bukhari, Kitab-ul-Wudhu, pp.103). Similarly, this statement from the Holy Prophet illustrates well the principle of sustainable land use: “If someone revives an infertile piece of land by planting trees and by farming on it, such person will be rewarded by God for this righteous deed. If any living creature benefits from this land or from its produce, it will be recorded as charity for the one who cultivates it” (Bayhaqi, pp.20-22). On a personal level, the Holy Prophet himself was a practical model to others in terms of environmental sanitation. He, alongside his beloved wife Hazrat Aishah Siddiqah, would make their surroundings clean by sweeping the floor of their own house, courtyard, and backyard even as far as the adjacent lot next to the Prophet’s mosque (Sunan Tirmidhi, pp.11-13).

The Sahabah-ul-Kiram (Holy Companions of the Prophet), who themselves were ideal examples of holiness, followed the Prophet’s guidance with respect to ecological protection. For instance, the first Caliph of Islam, Hazrat Abu Bakr Siddiq warned the armies who were defending the borders of Islam: “Do not burn farmlands, nor uproot and cut down fruit-bearing trees. Do not slaughter cattle or sheep that are not yours”. It is narrated that one fine day, Hazrat Abu Bakr was planting trees by the roadside, a Bedouin passerby thought that for the Caliph to plant trees with his own hands is beyond the dignity of his office, he therefore frankly told Hazrat Abu Bakr his opinion. Upon hearing it, Hazrat Abu Bakr replied: “The Prophet said that if a person plants a tree, the fruits eaten by any humans or any of God’s creatures, or even those eaten by travellers will be recorded as charity for the one who planted it. This is why I am planting trees by the roadside.” (The Virtues of Sayyedena Abu Bakr as-Siddiq, pp.78)

For my final point, allow me once again to quote from the Holy Qur’an: “Oh children of Adam, attend to your adornment at every time of prayer, and eat and drink and be not prodigal; surely He loves not the prodigals” (Araf: 31). We, Muslims must endeavour to comply with this directive of ecological sustainability given by Almighty Allah to us and strive to teach this to our fellow believers. In order to be true disciples of our Prophet Muhammad and to be truly obedient worshippers of Almighty Allah, we Muslims must therefore strive to live in accordance with nature, cease from wasting resources from our environment, endeavour to protect our environment from man-made degradation, and pro-actively promote ecological sustainability measures. Furthermore, we should always be aware of our responsibility to manifest God’s divine character of “Al-Quddus” (The Most Pure) in our lives, by our constancy in guarding our surrounding, making it pure and clean always. Above all, we must constantly remember that Allah has entrusted us to be His stewards in taking care of the earth and all of His creatures. By the grace of Allah, we will be faithful trustees of the environment which Allah has entrusted upon us to care for, cherish and protect. In this way, we will, Insha’Allah, be able to bequeath a cleaner, more habitable and more liveable world for the incoming future generations. Amen. May it be so!

Prof. Henry Francis B. Espiritu is Associate Professor-VI of Philosophy and Asian Studies at the University of the Philippines (UP), Cebu City. He was former Academic Coordinator of the Political Science Program at the University of the Philippines Cebu from 2011-2014. His research interests include Islamic Studies particularly Sunni jurisprudence, Islamic feminist discourses, Islamic philosophy, the writings of Imam al-Ghazali on tolerance and pluralism, Turkish Sufism and Public Theology.

By Shakil Hasan Shamsi (Translated from Urdu by New Age Islam Edit Desk)

22 May, 2015

For the last fourteen hundred years the world has been harping on the fact that Islam is a religion of peace and harmony. For the lastr fourteen hundred years the Quran has been reiterating that it has been revealed to establish peace and brotherhood in the world. The scripture that says La tufsidu fil arz (do not spread bloodshed on earth) has been shouting that the murder of one innocent person is the murder of the entire humanity In the human history, it is the Quran that separated the oppressors from the general humanity and condemned them. Fourteen hundred years ago when a voice was raised from a nondescript house of Bani Hashim in Makkah that said, “Say that no one deserves worship except God and get salvation” the person who raised this voice did not have a sword in hand but the courage to suffer wounds. Fourteen years ago when the holy prophet pbuh was forced to migrate from Makkah, he did not have a sword in his hand even then. The persons chasing the prophet pbuh were armed but the prophet pbuh and his companion were unarmed. God had arranged cobweb and a nest of a bird. No armed youth were appointed there to protect him.l

The people of Madinah had gathered in great numbers to greet the messenger of peace. The socalled followers of the same prophet pbuh who spread the message of sacrifice, love and tolerance have emerged with their flag who are saying that Islam had never been a religion of peace. These groups say that Islam has always been a religion of war and bloodshed. The leader of this group Al Baghdadi whose death news had been circulated among the media has issued a video purportedly saying that Muslims from all over the world should join his so called khilafat or if that is not possible, should wage a war against their opponents in their places and countries. This statement of Al Baghdadi is being used against Islam by the Western nations. On many news channels in the west, Islam is being made the target. Fingers are being pointed at the message of the holy prophet pbuh who came in the world as a blessing for the mankind. The same people who had drawn the cartoon of the holy prophet pbuh with a sword in one hand and the Quran in the other are using the statement of Al Baghdadi against Islam.

We are all aware of the fact that Al Baghdadi first killed Muslims on sectarian lines, then slaughtered the Christians of Iraq and then killed the Yazidis and Sunnis of Kurdistan. His actions had proved that he was an enemy of Muslims. Now he has also proved that he is also an enemy of Islam. By declaring Islam to be a religion of war and bloodshed, he is attacking the mission of the holy prophet pbuh and inviting Muslim youth towards Hell in the name of jihad. The brutality and ruthlessness his group has demonstrated in slaughtering human beings makes one feel that to him bloodshed and slaughtering of human beings is real Islam. Therefore, the time has come for all the Muslims irrespective of caste and sect to stand up against these marauders and thwart their propaganda of those attacking Islam otherwise we would not be able to show our face to our posterity. They will ask, “Why did you remain silent when the beautiful religion of the holy prophet pbuh was distorted by the terrorists?’

There can be no debate that din al-Islam is the religion of the followers of the Prophet Muhammad: Islam. However, the Qur’an also uses the generic word Islam, and its different roots, and the word Din, with various shades of meaning. Thus the Qur’an uses the word ‘din’ to denote judgment (1:4), divine law (2:193), law (of the land) (12:76), obedience or devotion (39:3), faith, religion, moral responsibility (107:1), religion in the conventional sense (110:2) etc. Based on these Qur’anic illustrations, the term Din would appear to embrace the broader notion of obedience (to God) or compliance (with God’s commandments), as against religion in its popular sense.1

The Qur’an uses the word Islam (root – SLM) in noun and verb forms with the connotation of orienting, submitting, surrendering, or committing oneself to God or to be at peace with God.2 The Qur’an further declares:

“Indeed! Whoever commits (asslama) his whole being [lit., face] to God, and does good deeds - will get his reward from his Lord. There will be no fear upon them nor shall they grieve.” (2:112).

“And who can be better in faith (din) than the one who orients (asslama) his whole being [Lit., face] to God, and does good deeds, and follows the way of Abraham, the upright one, and God took Abraham as a friend” (4:125).

“And who is finer in speech than the one who invites to God, does good deeds and says: ‘I am of those who submit to God (muslimun)’” (41:33).

In these verses, the Qur’an attributes the quality of doing good deeds to those who submit, or orient themselves to God (asslama, muslim).

7.1. Service to Humanity as the Essence of Din Al-Islam

Combining the foregoing underlined Qur’anic notions of i) din (primarily as obedience or devotion), and ii) the verb and noun forms of Islam (asslama, muslim), din al-Islam may be connoted with a faith system that calls for orienting oneself (asslama) to God for the doing of good deeds, or serving humanity. Accordingly the Qur’an describes ‘din al-Islam’, as the universal faith that was enjoined on earlier prophets, who were all true muslims (2:131-133), 3 and conveyed the same essential message.

“When his Lord said to him (Abraham), ‘Submit (aslim)’, he said, ‘I submit (aslamtu) to the Lord of the worlds’ (2:131). Abraham enjoined his sons to do so, as did Jacob: ‘O my sons, God has chosen the religion (din) for you; so you should not die unless you have submitted (Muslimoun)’ (132). Were you witnesses when death came to Jacob? He said to his sons, ‘What will you serve after I am gone?’ They said, ‘We will serve your God; the God of your fathers, Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac - the One God; and to Him we have truly submitted (muslimun)’” (2:133).

As if to leave no ambiguity on the cardinal significance of obedience to God through service to humanity, the Qur’an devotes a whole chapter to it:

“Do you see the one who belies the din (religion) (107:1)?. It is he who rebuffs the orphan (2), and does not encourage feeding the poor (3). So, woe to those prayerful (4), who are heedless of their prayer (5), who aim to be seen (in public) (6), but hold back from helping (others)” (107:7).

Muslims ardently believe in the ‘five pillars’ and are very particular to comply with them, but they are by and large not pro-active in serving humanity as required by their faith.

7.2. Corroboration from Islamic and Secular Sources

The foregoing exercise is no window dressing. Many eminent scholars of Islam, Muslims as well as non-Muslims, have acknowledged the pivotal role of service to humanity in Islam, as illustrated by the following quotations:

• “The essence of Islam is to serve God and to do good to your fellow creature.” - Abdullah Yusuf Ali4

• “To do the good in conviction or Iman (true faith in One God) is the noblest form of worship that any rational creature can offer to God.”- Husayn Haykal5

• “A Muslim is one who surrenders his or her whole being to the Creator. At first however, the believers called their religion ‘Tazaqqa’. This is an obscure word, which is not easy to translate. By cultivating ‘Tazaqqa’, Muhammad’s converts were to cloak themselves in the virtues of compassion and generosity; they were to use their intelligence to cultivate a caring and responsible spirit, which made them want to give graciously of what they had to all God’s creatures.”- Karen Armstrong6

6. Karen Armstrong, Muhammad, London 1991, p. 97. An early Qur’anic passage (92:17-21) brings across the notion of Tazaqqa implicit in the noted quotation.

[6 references]

Muhammad Yunus, a Chemical Engineering graduate from Indian Institute of Technology, and a retired corporate executive has been engaged in an in-depth study of the Qur’an since early 90’s, focusing on its core message. He has co-authored the referred exegetic work, which received the approval of al-Azhar al-Sharif, Cairo in 2002, and following restructuring and refinement was endorsed and authenticated by Dr. KhaledAbou El Fadl of UCLA, and published by Amana Publications, Maryland, USA, 2009.

Friday, May 22, 2015

Earlier this month a video was circulating on various social media platforms that showed a man in the usual pilgrim’s attire in Makkah (which means he was in the Grand Mosque to perform Umrah) using a chair to smash the glass doors near the end of the Mataf. It’s a mystery as to why a Muslim would travel all the way to the Kingdom at a great expense to perform his religious obligations and set about destroying the very thing that should be dear to his heart.

It has been reported that the individual may be mentally ill and not responsible for his actions. Maybe so, but it reminds me of the flagrant abuses by worshippers at the Holy Mosque and the Prophet’s Mosque that I often witness.

The basics of Islam, of course, are cleanliness, yet it’s common to see individuals perform ablution using drinking water and making a mess. Many worshippers visiting from outside the Kingdom arrive at the mosques with chest infections or flu and think nothing of spitting in a mosque or leaving tissues littering the floor. Children, uncontrolled by their parents, use mosques as a playground. Worshippers routinely sleep on the floor, ignoring the unwritten rule that the mosque is to be used for meditation and prayer, not for naps.

Also violating the commitment to cleanliness are worshippers who don’t bother to take bath. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) preferred that his fellow worshippers not eat garlic before prayer so as not to annoy fellow worshippers and the angels. Yet personal hygiene among foreign visitors and even some Saudis seem to elude those who want to pray. Washing and remaining clean is at the very core of our religion.

The Saudi government never complains or admonishes these abusers. But who takes the brunt of these poor manners? The workers at the mosques. These diligent men are extremely efficient and are constantly cleaning prayer areas, continually placing and returning prayer rugs to the rightful place within minutes. They silently tolerate this behavior and clean the messes of the rude and selfish without complaint.

Over the past decade Saudi Arabia has spent SR70 billion to expand the Grand Mosque and the Prophet’s Mosque and to develop the surrounding areas by building roads, bridges, tunnels and service utilities.

The expansion at the Prophet’s Mosque consists of 82,000 square meters to accommodate 150,000 worshippers for a total area of 98,500 square meters to accommodate up to 180,000 of the faithful. The extension of the roof alone is 67,000 square meters. In all, the mosque can accommodate 270,000 worshippers at a time.

These expensive projects serve one purpose: To ensure that every Muslim on earth can worship in comfort. But many Muslims appear to believe that the mosques are their own personal home and treat these holy places as if they are in their own sitting rooms, or worse, their yards.

Education is the key to preserving these mosques, and perhaps it’s now time for the Saudi government to issue advisories that spell out a code of conduct that should be followed. Umrah and Haj companies should also have the responsibility to educate their customers — indeed, supervise their behavior — about mosque etiquette.

There is something sickeningly wrong when slaughter is revenged by the deafening sounds of, ‘bleat, bleat’, while armchair warriors beat their chests and retire for the night. There is something nauseatingly wrong when 45 executed bodies cannot make the leader do the right thing.

For make no mistake: we are living in the midst of genocide. The randomness of this barbarity hides a steely purpose, and day after day more dead people fuel it with their blood. Terrorists kill with impunity. They kill with ease. They seem unstoppable. And all because we are bleeding courage. And resolve. And clear intent.

But we have a plan. The National Action Plan (NAP). It’s been four months since the entire leadership stamped its approval on this ambitious plan. Here’s where it stands today:

Point 4: Strengthening and activation of Nacta (not done); Point 10: Registration and regulation of madrasas (half-hearted effort); Point 12: Fata reforms (not done); Point 16: Taking the ongoing operation in Karachi to its logical conclusion (nowhere near); Point 17: Balochistan reconciliation (no progress); Point 20: Revamping and reforming the criminal justice system (not even started).

Now contrast this abysmal record with the points that have been worked on: Point 1: Execution of convicted terrorists; Point 2: Establishment of special trial courts; Point 5: Countering hate speech and extremist material (limited progress); Point 6: Choking financing for terrorists and terrorist organisations (some headway); Point 8: Establishing and deploying a dedicated counterterrorism force (some headway); Point 11: Ban on glorification of terrorism and terrorist organisations through print and electronic media (progress); Point 19: Policy to deal with the issue of Afghan refugees (some progress).

The rest of the points? Well, take a look and judge for yourself:

Point 3: Ensure no armed militias are allowed to function in the country; Point 7: Ensuring against re-emergence of proscribed organisations; Point 9: Taking effective steps against religious persecution; Point 13: Dismantling communication networks of terrorist organisations; Point 14: Measures against abuse of internet and social media for terrorism; Point 15: Zero tolerance for militancy in Punjab (right!); Point 18: Dealing firmly with sectarian terrorists.

A clear pattern emerges: progress has been achieved on those points that needed a quick administrative order; some headway is seen on those points that needed relatively easy decisions; but nothing has been done on the issues that require fundamental structural reform of deep-seated problems. In other words, wherever serious political will is needed, there is silence.

Why does it seem that the government has outsourced the fight against militancy to the army? Does the government not have the capacity to lead this war? Does it not have the will to do so? Or do the top men in the government not really and truly believe that this fight must be fought at every level? Something, somewhere does not add up.

Look around you and ask yourself: are we in a state of war? Does it look like that? Forty-five people executed in cold blood on the streets of Karachi, but do you hear the sounds of war? More than a hundred children slaughtered in Peshawar exactly five months ago, but do you see the sights of war? Or do you see life as usual punctuated with sights and sounds of green trains, orange metros and black highways?

Don’t get me wrong: planes, trains and automobiles are good, and we need them. But for God’s sake, we are in the middle of an existential war and the waging of this war requires every single waking second that our leadership has. Nothing else matters, because well, that gleaming train and that shining Metro won’t really help me if I’m dead. And that’s the real tragedy here: the completely messed up priorities of the leadership. Yes, the civilian leadership. There, I’ve said it.

Democratic sensibilities outraged? Good. They should be. The leader can obsess about infrastructure projects but Nacta does not interest him; he can get feverish over motorways and industrial plants but cannot be bothered about serious madrassa reform; he can babble on and on about solar plants but cannot get a grip on Fata reform; and he can lecture us on economic growth rate but doesn’t seem to be bothered about the death rate. Give away laptops? Sure. Hand out loans? Yep. Roll out crazy employment schemes? Absolutely. Reform the criminal justice system? Err…?

The prime minister has the biggest bully pulpit in the country. He can set the national agenda. That’s what he gets paid for. Every single day or every week of every month, he should be obsessing about this existential war; every second of every minute of every hour he should be expressing his resolve to fight and win this war, whatever it takes, and howsoever long it takes. The prime minister should be leading from the front, using the media space he has to be here, there and everywhere — telling a battered nation that he will do everything possible to protect it. Everything possible.

But here’s where the lambs break into cold sweat. Who has courage to take on the madrassas and their powerful sponsors? Who has the courage to lock horns with the apologists who provide physical and ideological space for the extremists? Who has the courage to bring down political parties that feed a narrative of extremism and who soften the ground for intolerance among the population?

How many buses and schools will we protect? How many shopping centres and places of worship will we guard? There are not enough police and Rangers in this country to protect every soft target. The only way to win this fight is to go to the root of the problem buried deep inside the folds of this society, and cleanse the cancer from there. But to do this the leader has to obsess with the challenge. To do this, the leader has to understand that his legacy is far more important than his next election.

So dear prime minister: go and stand inside that bus in Karachi, alone; look at the empty seats and hear the silent screams; smell the stench of ammunition, and let fear cover you like a thick blanket. Close your eyes, and think. What must you do?

What Makes A Terrorist Or A Target Killer Tick: Can the Reason Be Found In Complex Socio-Political Analysis?

Of Rage and Guilt

By Nadeem F. Paracha

17 May, 2015

There is a very interesting chapter in Blood and Rage, British author Michael Burleigh’s hefty and comprehensive book on the history of terrorism.

The chapter is about the rise (and fall) of left-wing terrorism in European countries and the United States in the late 1960s and across the 1970s.

Burleigh correctly reminds the reader that the Marxist and anarchist terror outfits operating at the time in Europe and the US were largely groups that had emerged from the collapse of the widespread student uprisings that had erupted in the West in the 1960s.

This meant that the Western terrorist outfits of that time were almost entirely being operated by the well-educated urban middle-class youth.

But while investigating the reasons behind why such young men and women would decide to indulge in terrorism, Burleigh offers a more psychological explanation that (to him) had little to do with things like state oppression, exploitation and class warfare.

What makes a terrorist or a target killer tick? Can the reason be found in complex socio-political analysis ... or is there a simpler explanation?

Taking the example of Germany’s most notorious left-wing terror outfit of the 1970s, the Red Brigade, Burleigh suggests that the violent radicalism of the organisation’s members was largely triggered by their failure to come to terms with a particular kind of guilt.

This guilt, Burleigh explains, had to do with the fact that the parents of thousands of young Germans had remained silent during the rise of Nazism and fascism in Germany (in the 1930s); and, more so, during the Nazi regime’s horrific atrocities against men and women whom the Nazis believed did not have ‘pure German blood.’

Burleigh adds that most European and American left-wing militants in the 1970s — after being introduced to an assortment of Marxian ideas and analysis — found their sedate, well-to-do and comfortable middle-class lifestyles to be an anomaly.

They believed that this anomaly was entirely cut off from the brutalities being faced by so many other (less privileged folk), mainly due to the economics and politics that were providing the Western middle-classes its comforts.

Such thinking manufactured a sense of guilt in many young middle-class men and women at the time. It also drove some to resolve this guilt in a more drastic and violent manner.

Today a wide circle of experts on terrorism (in the West) are trying to figure out what is driving many young, educated and middle-class Muslims to join violent nihilistic terror groups that are using the banner of religion. Is guilt playing a part in this context as well?

If one goes through the typical propaganda material that various so-called Islamic militant organisations use, the material sounds adamant on making possible recruits believe that they have been living idle, meaningless and illusionary lives whereas millions of their less fortunate Muslim brothers are being cut to size by powers that their governments and states are serving.

Professor Sadaf Ahmed in ‘Transforming Faith’ — her excellent study of women’s evangelical outfit, Al-Huda — mentions a young woman who (after joining Huda), started to feel “embarrassed by the lifestyle of her parents”.

The parents were like any other normal urban middle-class folk, but the young woman after she became a member of the said group, could not reconcile to the fact that her mother (in the 1970s), so casually wore sleeveless Kurtas!

Though the young lady did not decide to suddenly start bombing kurta shops, the fact is, a possible personal (and non-religious) existentialist crisis had transformed into becoming a burdensome feeling of guilt (of being part of something that did not appeal to the new-found aesthetic and religious aspects of the young lady).

Subsequently, she attempted to resolve this dilemma by espousing a supposedly nobler and divine cause, but the one that (at least indirectly) blamed her parents’ lifestyle and ‘ignorance’ (in matters that had left the lady feeling conflicted).

But are such episodes of guilt alone behind driving well-to-do and educated bourgeoisie urbanites to turn hostile (for an ideological cause)?

The guilt factor in this respect can be applied to understand men such as Omar Sheikh and Abdul Rashid Ghazi as well.

Sheikh was a highly educated middle-class young man. In the early 1990s, while studying at the prestigious London School of Economics (LSE), he became absorbed by the plight of Muslims in Bosnia (that was in the grip of a civil war at the time).

According to his own admission, he felt guilty at the way the Muslims were being slaughtered by Serbian nationalists in the region.

In an article on Sheikh, UK’s The Guardian newspaper claimed that he came into contact with certain radicals at the LSE.

So, maybe their account of the Bosnian war triggered in him the guilt of living an ideal life of a well-to-do and successful young man — an existence that gradually came into conflict (as a feeling) with what he began to perceive was happening to Muslims around the world.

He tried to resolve his existentialist predicament by joining militant outfits and partaking in violent activities — as if to feel that he had become one with those who were being brutalised.

But the guilt was not resolved. It was only allowed to mutate into becoming a somewhat warped realisation of morality, the self and the world at large.

As a consequence, Sheikh today is in a Pakistani jail for murder.

Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the former cleric of Islamabad’s volatile Red Mosque, had spent most of his youth as a young man who wanted to represent Pakistan at the UN.

Throughout his childhood and youth he was at odds with his cleric father. He had, in fact, been a passionate social-democrat and a member of a progressive student outfit at the Quaid-i-Azam University (in the 1980s).

But he suddenly transformed after his father was gunned down in the 1990s. His elder brother admonished him for abandoning their father. Ghazi went into depression, and took upon himself the guilt of not reconciling with his father before his demise.

Here as well, guilt was not resolved on a more personal level, but allowed to mutate and manifest itself as an angry cry backed by a self-serving ideology. In Ghazi’s case, it was against ‘immorality.’

He was killed by the government in 2007 after his followers kidnapped cops and then some women that (he believed) were running ‘immoral businesses’ in Islamabad.

But what about men like Saulat Mirza, who was recently hanged for a murder that he committed in 1998?

Mirza belonged to a middle-class family of Karachi and had become a worker of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) at college in the late 1980s.

Popular with women, highly social, and decent in his studies, Saulat turned into a violent young militant in the early 1990s. What guilt drove him over the edge?

Professor of Political Science, Dr Mohammad Wasim, in his 1996 paper, ‘Ethnic Conflict in Pakistan: The case of MQM,’ mentions that at least one way of the MQM to bag young recruits (at the time) was to remind young Urdu-speakers (Mohajirs), how their people had continued to be exploited by various governments and political parties.

This was also a way to plant the suggestion that parents of young Mohajirs had allowed this exploitation to take place.

Oskar Verkaaik in his book Migrants and Militants quotes a number of young MQM activists (in the early 1990s), who whinged at their parents’ ‘foolishness’ in this respect.

The largely perceived and indoctrinated memory of one’s parents being (willingly) taken for a ride by insincere politicians, infuriated many Mohajir youth who began to do what they thought their parents should’ve done. To some this also meant picking up a gun.

Verkaaik and Dr Nichola Khan in their respective studies of the MQM militants have also pointed out that becoming a militant also provided the young men an identity which replaced the identity that they were not happy with.

Or maybe, as is the case with their middle-class militant counterparts on the right, they sported a new identity to replace the one that they were guilty about?

Senior Muslim cleric Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi has condemned death sentences passed on himself, former Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi and 105 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood group over a mass jail break in 2011.

In a video statement posted on Qaradawi's twitter account on Sunday, the elderly Qatar-based cleric who is also a spiritual leader for the Muslim Brotherhood said the rulings were “nonsense” and violated Islamic law.

“These rulings have no value and cannot be implemented because they are against the rules of God, against the people's law...no one will accept it,” Qaradawi said in the statement, which was broadcast by Al Jazeera's Arabic news channel in Qatar.

In line with all death sentences, the decisions issued on Saturday will be referred to the grand mufti, Egypt's religious authority, for a non-binding opinion.

A final court ruling is expected on June 2.

The charges relate to Mursi's escape along with other Brotherhood leaders from a prison north of Cairo during the 2011 Arab Spring unrest. Qaradawi denied involvement in the escape in his video statement and said he was in Qatar at the time.

An Egyptian regarded as one of Islam's top thinkers, Qaradawi's religious shows on Al Jazeera have been watched by millions.

His criticism of Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, the former army chief elected to succeed Mursi after a popularly backed takeover in 2013, has added to a rift between Qatar and other Gulf Arab states.

The executed ISIL members had been taken as hostage along with 17 others in Arsal heights.

The ISIL has also accused Al Nusra Front of abducting one of its commanders named Abu Dajaneh Ebadeh in Eastern Ghouta.

On Wednesday, tens of terrorists were killed and dozens more injured in heavy infighting between the ISIL and Jaish al-Fath Takfiri groups in the Damascus countryside in the Southern parts of Syria.

At least 15 ISIL forces were killed and 60 more were taken captive in Al-Qalamoun region in Damascus countryside.

The infighting occurred after Jaish al-Fath in a statement warned the Salafi youth against joining the ISIL.

The Qalamoun region is located Northeast of the Syrian capital, Damascus.

The infighting seems to have erupted after ISIL turned down an Al-Nusra Front's call for supporting it in the war on the Syrian troops, and tried to open an independent front in the region of Qalamoun.

http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13940227000417

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Egypt hangs six convicted militants with link to Islamic State

17 May 2015

CAIRO: Egyptian authorities hanged six men convicted of killing soldiers Sunday, police said, ignoring appeals to spare them amid allegations that two of them had been in custody at the time of their alleged crimes.

Prosecutors said they were members of the Sinai-based Ansar Beit al-Maqdis jihadist group, which late last year pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

A military court upheld the death sentences last March, following a trial in which the six were convicted of carrying out the attacks in the months after the army's overthrow of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.

Human rights groups had appealed for a stay of execution, saying two of the defendants had been in custody at the time.

Amnesty International said the men underwent a “grossly unfair” trial and that the only witness during the trial was a secret police officer.

The sentence was carried out by hanging in a Cairo jail, the officials said.

Some of the men had been arrested when police and soldiers raided their safehouse north of Cairo in March 2014.

Two army explosive experts and six militants were killed in an ensuing gunfight, adding to the list of charges against the six men.

Two Gulf nationals in Qatar have each been handed one year prison sentences for shaving the moustache, beard and head of an expatriate driver.

The court in Doha accused the two men of being guilty of attacking and humiliating the Asian driver, Gulf News reported.

The defendants claimed that they were forced to react after the Asian driver had overtaken their car in a reckless way which almost caused them to hit the road’s side pavement on a major Doha road.

They also claimed that they were driving in a calm manner when they were almost hit by the Asian driver who wanted to get ahead of them without any forewarning.

The driver claims that he was driving normally on the road when another car kept signaling him to pull over when he ignored despite the persistence of the other vehicle.

After a brief chase, he decided to stop and enquire about the reasons the two people in the other car wanted him to stop.

The Asian driver said in comments carried by Al Raya, a local daily, “The two defendants held me and tied me up on the back seat of my car.”

“Then, one of them took out a shaver and shaved off half of my head, beard and moustache. They eventually untied me and sped away in their car. I alerted the police and an investigation was launched,” he added.

The two men were subsequently arrested and referred to public prosecution for questioning before being put on trial.

They confessed to abusing the victim claiming they wanted to teach him a lesson for allegedly endangering people’s lives through reckless driving.

The court issued the jail sentence and turned down other requests from the victim’s lawyer.

The nationalities of the victim and the co-defendants were not revealed.

A US special forces raid in eastern Syria killed 32 members of the Islamic State jihadist group, including four leaders, a monitoring group said Sunday.

"The US operation killed 32 members of IS, among them four officials, including IS oil chief Abu Sayyaf, the deputy IS defence minister, and an IS communications official," said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

US officials have said "about a dozen" people were killed in the operation on Friday night, which was conducted by Iraq-based US commandos in order to capture Abu Sayyaf.

Abdel Rahman said three of the four leading officials killed in the raid were from North Africa, but that the IS communications official was Syrian.

US President Barack Obama approved the special forces operation, a rare use of "boots on the ground" by the United States, which has fought the jihadists almost entirely from the air.

The operation targeted an IS compound at al-Omar, one of Syria's largest oil fields, which is located in the eastern Deir Ezzor province.

A US official speaking on condition of anonymity said the commandos engaged the jihadists "at very close quarters... there was hand-to-hand combat".

US Secretary of Defence Ash Carter called the operation a "significant blow" to IS, while Adam Schiff, a Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said US attacks "have put increasing pressure on the economics undergirding the terrorist organisation".

Syrian government troops and militia put up fierce resistance on Sunday to an ISIS assault on one of the jewels of the country's heritage, ancient Palmyra.

At least 47 regime loyalists and 29 jihadists were killed as ISIS overran northern neighborhoods of the adjacent modern town of Tadmur late on Saturday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Britain-based watchdog reported heavy artillery exchanges in the west of the town, close to the UNESCO-listed world heritage site.

But there were no immediate reports of damage to the ancient city's colonnaded street or its 1st and 2nd century temples.

ISIS was bringing up reinforcements from its stronghold in the Euphrates Valley to the east after sustaining heavy losses in its advance on the oasis town northeast of Damascus, provincial governor Talal Barazi told AFP.

The town's peacetime population of 70,000 has been swamped by an influx of civilians fleeing the ISIS advance.

"We are taking all necessary precautions, and we are working on securing humanitarian aid quickly in fear of mass fleeing from the city," Barazi said.

Syrian antiquities chief Mamoun Abdulkarim voiced extreme concern for the ancient site and its adjacent museum, in light of the destruction wreaked by ISIS on pre-Islamic sites like Nimrud and Hatra in neighboring Iraq.

"I am living in a state of terror," Abdulkarim told AFP, adding that ISIS "will blow everything up. They will destroy everything."

Eight soldiers have embraced martyrdom and 15 insurgents killed in newest military operations across the country, Ministry of Defense (MoD) announced Sunday morning.

A statement issued by the Ministry of Defense states that the eight soldiers embraced martyrdom in landmine explosion and militant fire in past 24 hours.

The statement does not contain information about the exact location of the incidents.

MoD statement further states 15 militants were killed and 10 others wounded during separate military operations conducted in four provinces in past 24 hours.

20 Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) were also discovered and defused by military during these operations, Ministry of Defense statement adds.

Beside causing casualties to the security forces, IEDs are considered the second biggest cause of civilian casualties during the ongoing Afghan war.

A newest report released by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) states that a rise of 16 percent was recorded in civilians casualties in the first four months of 2015 compared to the first four months of 2014.

2,937 fatalities have been recorded in these four months out of which there are 974 deaths and 1,963 wounded.

Police have finally proposed imposing a ban on radical Islamist outfit Ansarullah Bangla Team, believed to be involved in the killing of secular activists since 2013.

“Although we are yet to learn about its organisational structure, police have requested the government to ban Ansarullah’s activities as a pro-active and preventive measure,” SM Jahangir Alam, acting deputy commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, said yesterday.

If banned, Ansarullah activists will not be allowed to hold meetings, processions or preach its ideologies – either secretly or publicly. According to the police, such activities would be termed anti-state and the law enforcers would take legal action under the Anti-Militancy Act.

Detectives suspect that Ansarullah is now working as the Bangladesh representative of Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), formed last year following Al-Qaeda’s call to extend its activities in India, Myanmar and Bangladesh. It is also linked to other militant and around 60 organisatioPolice want ban on militant outfit Ansarullah groups as their ultimate goal is the same – establishing an Islamic state in Bangladesh.

KANO: A girl about 12 years old carried out a suicide attack at a bus station in northeastern Nigeria, killing seven and injuring 31,witnesses said, shortly after officials revealed that Boko Haram Islamists had recaptured a strategic town in the region.

“A girl aged about 12 detonated an explosive under her clothes as she approached the station’s perimeter fence,” said Danbaba Nguru, a shopkeeper who witnessed the attack in the town of Damaturu.

The head of the local Sani Abacha hospital, doctor Gara Fika, said six bodies and 32 injured had arrived there with one person dying after being admitted.

The Damaturu bus station has been repeatedly targeted in a string of previous suicide attacks.

“I was in the station when I saw the young girl arrive,” said bus driver Musbahu Lawan. “I think she noticed the guards checking people at the gates and she decided to detonate the explosives in the middle of the crowd outside the gates”.

Nguru added: “The road leading to the gates is always full of small traders... I was lucky not to have been hit”.

No claim of responsibility for the attack has been made but Islamist group Boko Haram has frequently used young girls to carry out suicide attacks.

The deputy governor in neighbouring Borno state, Mustapha Zannah, said that he had seen a security report indicating that Boko Haram has recruited several suicide bombers to help counter a regional military operation against them.

Rabat – King Mohammed VI examined proposals on abortion he asked the departments of justice and Islamic Affairs and the National Council for Human Rights (CNDH) to prepare.

The proposals showed that an “overwhelming majority” of Moroccans want to legalize abortion only in certain cases, including preserving the health of the mother, birth defects of the foetus, incest or rape. Based on these findings, King Mohammed VI gave his instructions to include the proposals in the Penal Code and submit them to the procedure of adoption.

King Mohammed VI received Friday, May 15 at the Royal Palace of Casablanca, Mustapha Ramid, Minister of Justice and Liberties, Ahmed Toufiq, Minister of Endowments and Islamic Affairs and Driss El Yazami, president of the National Council for Human Rights (CNDH), said a statement from the Royal Cabinet.

A restaurant in Nigeria has reportedly been shut down by the police for cooking human flesh and serving it to customers.

Locals in the area who suspected something horrific was taking place inside the kitchen tipped off the police who subsequently raided the hotel restaurant to discover human heads that were still dripping with blood in plastic bags.

A local priest who ate at the restaurant located in the south-eastern province of Anambra was alarmed at the price of meals there, especially where the meat came from, BBC Swahili reported.

Libya's official government has banned Bangladeshi workers from entering the country because many were trying to travel on illegally by boat to Europe, a government spokesman said on Saturday.

The North African country, gripped by violence and a breakdown of state authority four years after the ousting of Muammar Gaddafi, has turned into a major hub for human traffickers smuggling African migrants by boat to Italy.

"Bangladeshi workers will be banned from entry into Libya," said Hatem Uraibi, spokesman for Libya's internationally recognised government, which has been based in the east since losing control of the capital Tripoli last year.

"They come for work for Libyan firms but then embark on illegal migration (to Europe)," Uraibi told Reuters. "The ban is part of government efforts to fight illegal emigration."

He gave no more details on the ban which would only apply for land borders, ports and airports in eastern Libya where the internationally recognised government is in the control.

Western Libya, the main launch pad for smugglers sending boatloads of migrants towards Italian shores, is controlled by a rival government set up after an armed group seized Tripoli in August.

Tunisian militants have fought in foreign wars for decades, from Afghanistan to Somalia to Iraq. But after the 2011 revolt against President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, hundreds of hard-liners were released from prisons, strengthening militant ranks with experienced old hands.

Critics accused the Islamist-led government that followed Ali of allowing extremists too much freedom. Since then, a caretaker government and a coalition government elected at the end of 2014 have taken a tougher line, going to court to take back mosques, sweeping up hundreds of suspected militants, and curbing militant websites that recruit for Iraq and Syria.

Journalist Hedi Yahmed, whose book, “Beneath the Black flag: Tunisia’s Salafists,” features interviews with Tunisian militants fighting in Iraq, Somalia and Syria, said the jihadi phenomenon was driven in part by the end of 20 years of religious repression.

The Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind on Saturday urged the Centre to put a leash on the Hindutva forces, and stop the ‘Ghar Wapsi’ movement and the ‘Love Jihad’ campaign against Muslims across the country.

On the concluding day of the two-day 32{+n}{+d}General Session of the organisation at the Ramlila Grounds, Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind president Maulana Qari Syed Mohammad Usman Mansoorpuri said since the formation of the new government at the Centre, the two agendas – Ghar Wapsi and Love Jihad - had been going on full steam, vitiating the communal harmony in the country. People over the centuries had been forced to convert due to untouchability and victimisation of the oppressed classes, not owing to inducements, he said.

“There are several books in Persian which make it clear that the Muslim Sufis and the business classes never resorted to inducements to woo people to convert to Islam in the medieval period. Had this been the case then Muslims would not have remained a minority in this country,” he said. The Hindutva elements in the name of ‘Ghar Wapsi’ had been following a divisive agenda, ignoring appeals against it even by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said.

Dwelling on the ‘Love Jihad’ campaign, he said that the communal forces had launched a massive propaganda that Muslim youths had been converting Hindu girls under this campaign. Police investigations and judicial inquiries into alleged ‘Love Jihad’ cases had proved that all such marriages were not motivated by religious conversions.

He demanded passage of an anti-communal violence law and enactment of a law on the patterns of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act to provide protection to the Muslim community from communal violence.

Police investigations and judicial inquiries into alleged ‘Love Jihad’ cases have proved that all such marriages were not motivated by religious conversions

When Allah Baksh Yadwad walked free on May 2, acquitted of all charges of being a member of the banned outfit SIMI and planning “jihad” in India, the 30-year-old stepped into a world that had completely changed during the seven years he had spent in jail.

“My batchmates, even my juniors, are big doctors now, and I am nowhere,” he told The Sunday Express.

Yadwad didn’t fit the cliched narrative of a “school dropout turned terrorist”. He was a school topper and had completed his MBBS after making it to the Karnataka Institute of Medical Sciences (KIMS) in Hubli on merit.

And, like many of the 17 men arrested in the 2008 “SIMI conspiracy case”, he was on the verge of a successful professional career, having made his way up from a two-room house that he shared with his parents — his father Waliullah, 57, is a railway employee — four brothers and a sister.

KOCHI: It is with admiration and awe that Abdul Rahim, the 30-year-old Afghani, keeps looking at his 'dual-coloured' hands. Rahim, a captain with the Afghan border police who lost both his hands while trying to defuse a land mine in Khandahar, will soon leave Amrita Hospital after a successful twin-hand transplant.

The surgery carried out over a month ago lasted 15 hours, one hour less than the first such transplant at the hospital. "His hand structure was good and the progress has been fast, driven largely by his willpower. Two bones, two arteries, five veins, five nerves and 25 tendons were joined in each hand," said Dr Subramania Iyer, head and neck surgeon who led the team of 20 surgeons and eight anaesthetics.

Rahim had defused nearly 2,000 land mines in his life. "We had defused 30 mines on the day. The 31st one burst in my hand. It was remote-controlled and the man who activated it got Rs 40 lakh for maiming me," he said.

A 1996 batch IPS officer, Amin is the senior most deputy SP in Gujarat Police and was in judicial custody in Vadodara Central Jail.

The other IPS officers in service who are out on bail in the Ishrat case, Additional Director General of Police PP Pandey is now heading the Law and Order department while Superintendent of Police GL Singhal is with the Armed Units.

Additional Chief Secretary (Home) G R Aloria said, “We are going through his case papers and will revoke his suspension and reinstate him as per the rules of the police manual. He will be brought back to Gujarat Police.”

Amin was put under suspension after his arrest in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case Full report at:

What is it to be the only Muslim family in a colony in Bhavnagar, Gujarat?

May 17, 2015

It is 6 in the evening and a group of schoolgirls are playing a board game outside a large bungalow in a narrow lane of the Sanatorium area of Gujarat’s Bhavnagar. This is Afrin, 12, and nine-year-old Muskan’s home, and their friends Atri, Hirwa, Manaswi, Dhruva and Hasti have come over. Their brother, Mohammed Hussain, 5, and his cousin Arshad, 6, play near the girls. There’s a great deal of laughter as the girls move on to play antakshari and hopskotch.

Afrin’s is the only Muslim family in this predominantly Hindu locality. Last year, Aliasgar Zaveri, a Bohra Muslim businessman, bought a bungalow here. When Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader Pravin Togadia found out, he led a public agitation against the sale. A year on, Zaveri has sold off his house to Jain builders as he could never move in, with Hindu right-wing groups facilitating the exit.

Imran criticises Morsi death sentence: 'Egypt should learn from Pakistan'

17 May 2015

KARACHI: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan has criticised an Egypt court's decision to sentence to death deposed Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, saying it "bodes ill" for the Egyptian people and democracy in Egypt.

In a tweet posted Sunday, Khan said:

In a second tweet, Khan correlated the death sentence awarded to Morsi with the controversial execution of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) founder and former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was hanged in 1979 for the murder of a political opponent.

A press release issued by the PTI quoted Khan as saying, "Pakistan had suffered tremendously as a result of the hanging of its democratic leader Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto by a military dictator".

"The Pakistani nation and democracy in Pakistan continue to suffer the fallout from Bhutto's hanging as the Pakistani polity stands polarised and militarised even today," the press release added.

PESHAWAR: Six suspected militants were killed and two others wounded in a US drone strike in the remote Shawal Valley in the North Waziristan tribal region late Saturday afternoon, sources said.

These sources said that the drone fired two missiles into a compound in the valley close to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, killing six militants. Most of those killed were foreigners, they added.

The number of casualties was set to rise, the sources said, wishing not to be identified.

Dattakhel and Shawal are by far the two major areas where the military is concentrating on air power to soften up the area infested by local and foreign militants, who fled Operation Zarb-i-Azb in North Waziristan.

http://www.dawn.com/news/1182490/us-drone-attack-in-nwa-kills-six

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In world's most dangerous country for journalists, female reporters try guns for a change

17 May 2015

KARACHI: As more and more women journalists enter the field, reporting from some of the most dangerous areas of Pakistan, a small group of them were given a different sort of training on Saturday. They were taught to aim not their cameras or point their pens, rather pull triggers of machine guns and paint targets with bullets at a police training centre near Karachi.

This special training was part of the Hostile Environment Awareness Training (HEAT) organised by the Special Security Unit (SSU) of the Sindh police at the Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Elite Police Training Center, Razzaqabad on Saturday.

For a change, the 50 meter short firing range at the training center saw excited journalists taking turns to prove their marksmanship instead of police commandos, who stood by offering tips.

The decision to increase the tempo and range of targeted operations across Pakistan ─ especially in Karachi ─ was reached during an apex committee meeting on Thursday, a day after a horrific attack on Karachi's Ismaili community left 45 people dead.

At the meeting, Chief of Army Staff Gen Raheel Sharif vowed to continue "across the board operations" at an increased pace and hunt down terrorists who commit heinous acts.

Military spokesman Asim Bajwa announced that the meeting had assessed ongoing operations against terrorists, and touched upon directing intelligence agencies to assist in the "exploitation of existing leads" in all operations.

Saudi Arabia beheaded a Pakistani sentenced to death for drug smuggling on Sunday, bringing to 84 the number of executions in the ultra-conservative kingdom this year, the interior ministry said.

Iftikhar Ahmed Mohammed Anayat was found guilty of attempting to traffic heroin into the kingdom in balloons concealed in his stomach, the ministry said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.

He was executed in the Red Sea city of Jeddah.

The ministry has cited deterrence as a reason for its use of the death penalty despite criticism from human rights watchdogs.

London-based Amnesty International ranked Saudi Arabia among the world’s top three executioners of 2014.

On a visit to Riyadh this month, French President Francois Hollande said capital punishment “should be banned”, and his country is campaigning around the world for its abolition.

Drug trafficking, rape, murder, apostasy and armed robbery are all punishable by death under Saudi Arabia’s strict version of Islamic sharia law.

ISIS militants are being smuggled into Europe across the Mediterranean by smugglers, a Libyan official told the BBC exclusively on Sunday.

Libyan government official Abdul Basit Haroun said that smugglers were hiding ISIS militants aboard their vessels crammed with migrants.

He claimed this information was from conversations he had with boat owners in parts of North Africa which are controlled by the militants.

He added that ISIS was allowing the smugglers to continue their operations in exchange for a 50 percent share of their revenue.

The U.N. estimates that around 60,000 migrants have already attempted to get across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe this year.

Over 1,800 people are feared to have died in the crossing in overcrowded and unsafe boats since the beginning of 2015 – a 20-fold increase over the same period in 2014, according to the British broadcaster.

Losing their religion: the hidden crisis of faith among Britain’s young Muslims

17 May 2015

Sulaiman Vali is a softly spoken 32-year-old computer engineer. A natural introvert not drawn to controversy or given to making bold statements, he’s the kind of person who is happiest in the background. He lives alone in a modest house on a quiet street in a small town in East Northamptonshire. He doesn’t want to be any more specific than that about the location. “If someone found out where I lived,” he explains, “they could burn my house down.”

Why should such an understated figure, someone who describes himself as a “nobody”, speak as if he’s in a witness protection programme? The answer is that six years ago he decided to declare that he no longer accepted the fundamental tenets of Islam. He stopped being a believing Muslim and became instead an apostate. It sounds quaintly anachronistic, but it’s not a term to be lightly adopted.

German spy agency told US of bin Laden's presence in Pakistan: German media

17 May 2015

BERLIN: Germany's foreign intelligence agency helped United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) track down Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, where United States special forces killed the Al Qaeda leader, reported a German newspaper on Sunday.

The German spy-service BND provided a tip-off that bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan, with the knowledge of Pakistani security services, according to the Bild am Sonntag report, which was published as the agency is battling heavy criticism in a spy scandal.

The information came from a BND informant within Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency and confirmed CIA suspicions, said the newspaper report which cited unnamed US intelligence sources.

The American source was quoted as saying the German tip-off was of “fundamental importance” in the hunt for the architect of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Pakistan has denied that it knew bin Laden was living within its borders or that it had advance knowledge of the 2011 US special forces operation that killed him in a walled compound in the city of Abbottabad.

Rabat – Zineb El Rhazoui, Moroccan-French columnist for the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, has been warned she may be laid off for “serious misconduct”, according to le Monde.

El Rhazoui, who has worked for Charlie Hebdo since 2011, was told by the magazine to immediately leave her post ahead of a meeting where her potential dismissal will be discussed.

Speaking to French daily le Monde, El Rhazoui said she was “shocked and appalled that a management that has received so much support since the attacks in January can show such little support to one of its own employees, and who, just like everyone else on the team, lives under threat.”

El Rhazoui told the French newspaper that the magazine’s decision was likely a “punitive measure” for being among the 11 Charlie Hebdo staff members who last month called for all employees to become equal shareholders in the magazine.

Cairo (AFP) - The United States voiced alarm Sunday at death sentences handed to Egypt's ousted president Mohamed Morsi and dozens of others, a verdict experts called a declaration of "total war" on his Muslim Brotherhood.

Morsi was among more than 100 defendants ordered by an Egyptian court on Saturday to face the death penalty for their role in a mass jailbreak during the 2011 uprising.

He ruled for only a year before mass protests spurred then-army chief and now President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to overthrow him in July 2013.

Sisi won a presidential election in May 2014 backed by Egyptians tired of political turmoil in the world's most populous Arab nation following the 2011 revolt against longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

Washington expressed concern over Saturday's verdict.

"We have consistently spoken out against the practice of mass trials and sentences, which are conducted in a manner that is inconsistent with Egypt's international obligations and the rule of law," a State Department official said.

The United States upped the ante in its war on the Isis in Syria, killing a dozen militants and a major fundraiser Saturday in a rare ground operation by special forces, the White House said.

US commandos have entered Syria before, including last year on a failed bid to rescue Western hostages, but this week's operation appeared to mark a departure in missions targeting the militants.

The decision to send commandos to strike the inner circle of the Isis group was an unexpected move by the Americans, who have so far fought the extremists almost entirely from the air.

The raid is the first publicly confirmed American ground operation targeting jihadists in Syria.

On orders from President Barack Obama, elite troops from the US Army's Delta special operations forces based in Iraq sought to capture the Isis militant Abu Sayyaf, who oversaw oil smuggling for the jihadists.

Hezbollah fighters invited journalists on a tour of Syria’s mountains region of Qalamoun to wittiness a mock patrol last Friday, the New York Times reported.

The presentation, which was briefed by a Hezbollah field commander at the unmarked boarder, was held on a flat terrain, a territory that was seized by the Lebanese Shiite group in recent days from insurgents in Syria.

The commander told the New York Times that Hezbollah fighters had broken up 40 fighting groups, three “operations rooms” and took over 300 square kilometers of territory that insurgents used as a base to lob shells into Lebanese villages and build car bombs for attacks in Beirut.

Obama recalls 1991 action against Saddam to assure GCC states of help during crisis

17 May 2015

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama said on Saturday that if member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council faced an external threat, the United States would deal with it the same way it dealt with Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iraq.

In an interview to Al-Arabiya television, President Obama said that even if the United States and five other world powers concluded a nuclear deal with Iran there would still be concerns about “some of those activities by not only Iran and the Quds Force and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, but also proxies like Hezbollah.”

On Thursday, Mr Obama hosted a mini-Arab summit at Camp David where the United States agreed to defend its GCC allies with military power if they faced a foreign threat. The two sides also agreed to create a joint missile defence and an early warning system.

Asked to define the military support he would provide to GCC states if they faced aggression, Mr Obama said: “We’ve seen in the past what happened in Kuwait when Saddam Hussein invaded.”

WASHINGTON: A Washington rabbi who admitted to setting up cameras to spy on women as they prepared for Jewish ritual baths was sentenced Friday to more than six years in prison, the Justice Department said.

Bernard “Barry” Freundel, 63, was sentenced on 52 counts of voyeurism after pleading guilty in February to videotaping the women from 2009 to 2014.

Superior Court Judge Geoffrey Alprin sentenced Freundel to 45 days in prison for each of his 52 victims. The full sentence is six and a half years, the Justice Department said.

Alprin said the rabbi’s actions were “a classic abuse of power and violation of trust.”

Freundel was immediately taken into custody, and started serving his sentence Friday.

VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis met Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Saturday, calling him “an angel of peace”, days after the Vatican said it was preparing to sign its first accord with Palestine to the anger of Israel.

Abbas met the pontiff for about 20 minutes at a private audience, which came a day before the head of the Roman Catholic Church was due to canonise two Palestinian nuns, who will become the first Palestinian Arabs to gain sainthood.

The Vatican said in a statement the pope and Abbas discussed the peace process with Israel and that “the hope was expressed that direct negotiations between the parties be resumed in order to find a just and lasting solution to the conflict”.

“To this end the wish was reiterated that, with the support of the international community, Israelis and Palestinians may take with determination courageous decisions to promote peace,” it said.

The two men also touched on other conflicts in the Middle East and the need to combat “terrorism”, it added. They exchanged gifts with the pope giving Abbas a medal with a figure of the angel of peace “which destroys the evil spirit of war”.

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Iran will protect "oppressed" people in the region: Khamenei

17 May 2015

DUBAI: Iran will help oppressed people in the region as much as it can, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was quoted as saying on Saturday, ratcheting up his rhetoric against regional rival Saudi Arabia.

“Yemen, Bahrain and Palestine are oppressed, and we protect oppressed people as much as we can,” state news agency IRNA quoted Khamenei as saying in an address to Iranian leaders and diplomats from the Islamic world.

His comments are likely to be taken by Gulf Arab leaders, who on Thursday met with US President Barack Obama to address security issues, as evidence that Iran is trying to aggressively expand its influence in the region.

An increasingly tense standoff between Iran and Saudi Arabia has added a sectarian dimension to regional conflicts, particularly in Yemen where a Saudi-led coalition of Sunni Arab states is carrying out air strikes against Houthi rebels allied to Iran.

The standoff has also raised concerns for shipping in the Gulf, a major oil transport route. In the past month, Iranian forces have twice tried to seize commercial ships to settle legal disputes.

“Security in the Persian Gulf is in the interests of everyone... If it is insecure, it will be insecure for all,” Khamanei said according to IRNA.

Israel marked the 48th anniversary of the "reunification" of Jerusalem on May 17 with thousands expected to join a controversial march through the city's Arab eastern sector which it captured in the Six-Day War.

Known as Jerusalem Day, the anniversary marks Israel's seizure and later annexation of the territory, which includes the walled Old City, in a move never recognised by the international community.

The day is marked by a series of state ceremonies and an annual march through the Muslim Quarter of the Old City to the Western Wall, the holiest site at which Jews can pray, which is predominantly attended by nationalist hardliners.

Yemeni President Abdrabbu Mansour Hadi urged Sunday the U.N. Security Council to work on the implementation of resolution 2216 on Yemen.

Resolution 2216 was passed in April under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter and imposes sanctions against the leader of the Houthi movement along with Yemen's former leader Ali Abdullah Saleh. It was unanimously adopted by the session, with Russia being the only member abstaining, without using its veto.

Hadi, who was speaking during the opening session of the three-day Yemeni dialogue conference, also said that the Riyadh-based meeting would be the basis for any dialogue or negotiations.

Full report at:

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UN envoy urges extension of Yemen humanitarian truce

17 May 2015

A UN envoy called for an extension of a humanitarian ceasefire in Yemen due to expire on May 17 as the Huthi Shiite rebels boycotted political talks in Riyadh.

The appeal followed clashes on the ground between rebels and pro-government forces that killed dozens across south Yemen on May 16 despite the truce, which has largely held.

"I call on all parties to renew their commitment to this truce for five more days at least," UN envoy to Yemen Ismail Ould Sheikh Ahmed said in the Saudi capital.

"This humanitarian truce should turn into a permanent ceasefire," the Mauritanian diplomat added.

Because Of Greed, Malaysian Would Rather Watch Rohingya Die, Perlis Mufti Says

17 May 2015

Perlis Mufti Datuk Dr Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin accused Malaysia’s Muslims today of putting their greed and avarice over their duty to help their Rohingya brothers in the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the seas of Southeast Asia.

He said Malaysia had already failed the Rohingya once by remaining silent over their state-sanctioned persecution by Buddhist “terrorists” in Myanmar, and is now repeating its failure by standing by silently to watch them suffer and die.

“When European countries that are not even Muslims try to save refugees in their waters, we who overdo it with a ‘salawat perdana’ (mass prayer) that cost hundred of thousands, are willing to watch people die out at sea because we fear our prosperity being shared by others,” he said, in what appears to be a dig at a large-scale Islamic prayer and concert held at Dataran Merdeka last New Year’s Eve.

“Then we say ‘we Muslims are the best’?!... It is feared this loss of humanity will draw the wrath of God in the seas and on the land. We seek Allah’s protection for all the rakyat who are innocent,” he said.

Malang, East Java. An event planned to commemorate anti-homophobia day in Malang, East Java, was canceled after the organizers claimed to have received threats.

The event, themed “Celebrate Our Gender,” was initially scheduled for Sunday in conjunction with International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, or Idahot.

Niken, one of the organizers of the event, said that she and a colleague started to receive threatening phone calls and text messages on Friday from people claiming to represent universities and several religious organizations in the city.

“Some people called and texted us to ask if we were going to gather people and invite the LGBT community,” Niken told the Jakarta Globe on Sunday. “Some questioned our permit while others opposed the celebration outright.”

One caller threatened to “forcefully dissolve” the event should organizers press forward with the celebration.

Jakarta. A lawmaker from the House of Representatives’ Commission I, which oversees defense, intelligence and security affairs, has urged the Indonesian military to rethink its invasive virginity tests for female recruits.

Tubagus Hasanuddin, a politician from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), said on Sunday there was no connection between virginity and morals.

“If a non-virgin is robbed of her right to join the military, we need to rethink it,” he said, adding he did not condone premarital sex.

Tubagus, a former high-ranked military official, said by law there were eight criteria that recruits had to meet to be accepted into the Indonesian Armed Forces, or TNI, but being a virgin was not one of them.

The so-called two-finger test, which the TNI requires female recruits to take to gauge their morality, has sparked international condemnation, but has been defended by top military brass.